Voice response units have been developed for generating an acoustic speech signal that communicates an intended message to permit a machine response to a human request for information. The units have been used to automate the process of entering or exchanging information with a system. Thus, voice response units permit natural interactions between a human and a system. The foregoing can be valuable for announcing warnings, reporting machine status or otherwise informing the system user, especially when the human can not view displays, due to concurrent visual tasks, visual handicap, or remote telephone link.
Often incorrect information is transmitted to voice response units and entered into the system (as valid data) that is coupled to the voice response unit. The incorrect information may result from: incorrectly typed human input information; information that was not heard or understood by the human; or information that was not correctly understood by the voice response unit due to noise on the communications link.
If, a voice response unit was used in a cellular telephone network, the foregoing problem would be exacerbated by the distance between the cellular telephone and the voice response unit, interference on the cellular network and too many phone calls being made on the cellular network.
Another problem of the prior art is that manual entry of data into a voice response unit is relatively slow and annoying to impatient people.